Next year Intel is going to introduce two new sockets to the CPU world. These sockets will replace the current LGA1156 and LGA1366 sockets. The pin count will be 1155 for the mid-range socket and 2011 (ironic as it’s coming out in 2011) for the high-end. The names of these new platforms are Sandy Bridge and Sandy Bridge E (enthusiast) respectively. The sockets will not be compatible with current generation CPUs and current boards will not be compatible with the new CPUs. Sandy Bridge and Sandy Bridge E CPUs will be running on a 32nm die and both platforms will have memory, PCI-E, and graphics controllers on a single die. The LGA1156 CPUs had the CPU and controllers on different dies just placed in the same CPU. This can only be a good thing. Both sockets will also support Hyper threading and Turbo Boost. The LGA 2011 socket will be much larger than the current 1366 socket to accommodate the extra pins.

There is no announced CPU names or clock speeds for the new parts yet, but we can expect them to be launched early next year. The LGA1155 might show up in Q4’10, but that is not known yet. No other information is known about these new platforms yet, but keep an eye out for more news as I find it.

Any other adopters of either of these sockets really annoyed by this? I expected at least a few years of support for both sockets, but we’re not even getting that. The 1366 socket came out mid-08 with the 1156 following a year later. While the LGA775 socket lasted a long time and AMD is still supporting its old sockets with backwards compatible CPUs. There doesn’t seem to be any major new features with the new socket, but maybe Intel is still hiding some information and will reveal more later on. I hope they go triple-channel DDR3 for the 1155 though it would be a nice improvement and lets hope the 2011 CPUs run cooler than the current 1366 ones.